


Into Emptiness

by salamandelbrot



Category: World Wrestling Entertainment
Genre: Gen, Kayfabe Compliant
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-14
Updated: 2017-02-14
Packaged: 2018-09-23 13:42:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 616
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9659798
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/salamandelbrot/pseuds/salamandelbrot
Summary: Jake Roberts picks up a hitchiker.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [RedLeaderfic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/RedLeaderfic/gifts).



Jake was familiar with demons. There was a time in his life, not so long ago, when he would have passed the man by. Just driven on his way and left him for someone else to pick up. He sighed. Clicked on his right blinker.

Pulling to a stop beside the man, Jake rolled down his passenger side window. "Where are you headed?"

"I'm on my way to Hartford Connecticut. I would be most grateful any ways you could bring me along." The man extended his hand, smiling. "Waylon Mercy's my name."

Making no move to accept the handshake, he said, "Jake Roberts. You'll have to sit in back."

"God as your copilot?" Mercy's eyes slid to the cross hanging from his rearview mirror.

Jake nodded to the large tupperware strapped in the passenger seat. "Between Him and Lucifer here, I do just fine." The snakes didn't care for the company. Lucifer was nosing along the walls of the tupperware, back and forth, looking for a weak spot. Down in the wheel-well, Revelations was writhing in her pillowcase.

Mercy folded himself into the back seat and slid over, all the way behind Jake. "Well, I thank you for your generosity. People these days, they just aren't inclined to talk to strangers. It must be that dangerous society I keep on hearing about. You know, I never seen any signs of it myself." 

"Why don't you take the middle seat? They say it's safer." The man was tall enough that there would be no need to adjust the rearview for Jake to keep an eye on him. 

"If they say so," Mercy agreed mildly, sliding back into view. The subtle shift of his shoulder was within Jake's sightline, but not his hand, sliding, Jake was sure, back into his pocket and coming out empty. 

As Jake pulled back onto the road, Mercy's eyes met his in the mirror, a sly look of feigned surprise spreading across his face. "Now, I believe I know you, Mr. Jake Roberts. I know you from the Florida TV. I've seen you running around with that Kevin Sullivan, devil worshipping, hurting people, making snakes crawl on them, enjoying how you hurt those people," he went on in his meandering drawl. 

"What was it called, that demon you people used to follow? Was it Abbadon, Abigail, Abalam-" He slapped his knee. "Abudadein! You people used to make sacrifice to the demon Abudadein, but now you turned that old cross back right side up and hung it off your rearview mirror. You even stop like that good Samaritan in the parable, and pick up people strange to you off the side of the road." 

"People change." Jake was a man who knew how to use words the way some wrestlers used holds. It was the mind he twisted rather than the body, but he could stretch a man as painfully as Stu Hart or Bob Roop. And, technical master that he was, he could recognize a practitioner of his own craft. 

"Oh, _people_ do change, they most surely do. But demons, they don't." Mercy chuckled warmly, laugh lines crinkling the dagger tattoo on his forehead. "You know what I mean?" 

Jake could recognize, too, a different sort of creature, a game not to play. Recite the Roman Ritual or the ritual of polite platitudes, either one would do, but present a surface that was smooth, with no protusions of the psyche to be grabbed and no windows to be pried open. Call it rope-a-dope, call it the turtle guard, call it transcendental meditation, but body or soul the game was the same: the denial of leverage. 

They passed the ride in conversation, saying nothing.


End file.
